Two decades after studying at Boston’s Berklee College of Music and relocating to Nashville, Mississippi native Charlie Worsham has forged a career as an award-winning artist/songwriter/musician. He’s a multi-hyphenate artist in his own right, but is also a first-call session player, touring bandmate, and essential thread in the fabric of country music’s current landscape.
His new album, Once Upon a Second Time Around, out Friday (Aug. 7), is his third full-length solo project, following 2013’s Rubberband and 2017’s The Beginning of Things, as well as the 2023 EP Compadres, but also launches a new independent era: The album is out on ONErpm after he spent years with Warner Records Nashville.
Concurrently with releasing his own music, Worsham has lent his prowess on guitar, mandolin, banjo and songwriting to albums by Eric Church, Carrie Underwood, Ella Langley, Kacey Musgraves, Kip Moore, Sam Williams, Luke Combs, and Dierks Bentley. He’s been part of touring bands for Vince Gill and Bentley, as well as briefly joining Old Crow Medicine Show. Early in his career, he played in the country group Kingbilly, where one of his bandmates was Brothers Osborne’s John Osborne.
“When you move to town, you need a little piss and vinegar, a little bit of an attitude, which I [had]. I had the great fortune of moving into a house and band with all these great musical big brothers I never had. Chief among them, John Osborne. The biggest difference from 21-year-old me to now is I’ve learned to let go of so much and in letting go, my hands are free to pick up the really beautiful parts.”
Two decades in the industry have helped Worsham, 40, arrive at a moment where he’s redefined for himself what constitutes success.
“It’s very easy to have blinders on as a young artist in town because the definition of success can be so narrow. What’s great in this moment is I have that proverbial seat at the table. I know enough to know now that what I was really tightly clinging to and what felt like anger was really fear that I wouldn’t have this permanent spot in town in this community,” he says. “I think the biggest shift is that I have freedom to expand my definition of success…Any day I wake up and I’m collaborating with people that challenge me and inspire me to be better and I’m being creative, that’s the dream.”
His experiences are woven into his new album. Guiding him as a mantra was “The impossible takes longer,” a saying he found in a book of quotes from Nobel Laureate honorees.
“It feels that way sometimes, like, ‘How do I get to this place, but bring my bluegrass heart that I have and this Southern rock heart that I have and all these things are starting to take shape?”
Worsham co-wrote around half of the album’s dozen songs, though he also worked with Sony Music Publishing’s exec vp of creative Josh Van Valkenburg, who played a key role in finding several of the album’s cuts, including “Family Man,” written by Josh Jenkins, Ben Stennis and Matt Rogers, and “They Never Do,” which was an older song written by Lainey Wilson, Dallas Wilson and Josh Nix.
“She’s a sister to me in that regard, she’s just been at it for a long time and had to be patient for the world to catch up,” Worsham says of Wilson, who previously recorded with Worsham for a song on his Compadres EP. “She did me a great kindness by singing on this.”
He adds, “Josh [Van Valkenburg] also found songs that I had written and kind of forgotten about,” Worsham says, including the album’s title track. “I was writing for a record I thought would be a Warner record. Technically, I had not parted ways with Warner until the middle of this process. The day I wrote that song, I needed to write for my heart and then I immediately disregarded it and didn’t think it would see the light of day.”
Songs like “Powers That Be” and “Family Man” center on Worsham’s balancing act between his musical duties, his roles as husband and father, and his podcast, Mississippi on the Map, which highlights his home state’s contributions to musical culture, as well as the 50 Years From Home with Gill.
“I’m still working on the balance. Part of that is self-induced, and part of it is just the nature of being a multi-hyphenate, which for a long time I felt worked against me,” he says. “[In] this independent season, it kind of works for me. I’m learning to sort of double down everywhere I can on doing the thing that only I can do. That means injecting a little bit of music nerd into things. That means injecting a medium dose of Mississippi into all things, telling stories,” he says. “And the balance part is definitely a challenge. But I’m better than I was last year. I’m better than I was the year before that at it. And so it’s an ongoing process and I am so grateful. I still love getting out on the road. But also coming home has never been sweeter.”
Time spent at home influenced “Years Go By,” which came from a COVID-era writing session over Zoom with Stephen Wilson Jr., as Worsham and his wife were expecting a child, and Wilson was teaching his son how to drive.
“At that time– and still do–I looked to dads who were farther down the road, like, ‘All right, help me out. What’s some wisdom?’ So it was half that and half co-write,” Worsham says.
The album closes with a reprise of one of the album’s earlier songs, “Wrap My Porch Around,” this time a nod to Worsham’s affinity for bluegrass by collaborating with The Travelin’ McCourys. In doing so, Worsham gives a nod to Bentley, who has often closed out his albums with a bluegrass cut, and Gill, who on his 1996 album High Lonesome Sound included two versions of the title track, one featuring Alison Krauss & Union Station.
“It was very much meant to be a tip of the hat to Dierks, but also to Vince. I’ve gotten to know the McCourys through being with Dierks,” he says. “And sweet Jason Carter, that recording was the last thing he did [as part of The Travelin’ McCourys] before striking out as a solo guy.”
Worsham calls Gill’s genre-blending High Lonesome Sound “monumental for me, because I knew I wanted to come to Nashville. I knew I was a bluegrass kid but I knew I loved ripping an electric guitar and country music. We even cut [“Wrap My Porch Around”] at Vince’s house and I played one of Vince’s acoustic [guitars] on it.”
Professionally and personally, he continues to view Gill as a role model.
“He understands that he has less time ahead of him to make music and be creative and every note matters,” he says. “I’m living another version of that; my kids are growing up faster than I’ll be able to emotionally handle. But I do, God willing, have decades of making music ahead of me. I hope that in the next 20 years, I’ll look back and go, ‘I made twice as much music as I had.’”
Ahead, fans could see a record that leans more heavily into Worsham’s bluegrass proclivities. “This moment where we’re in, where Billy Strings is selling multiple arena nights, it’s just a good time for music to blur the lines and for people to show all their cards and say, ‘This is where my journey has taken me.’”
